Reform as Asymmetric Conflict

 

By Hootsbuddy

Strategy: One Against Ten -- Tactics: Ten Against One. That, in the words of Chairman Mao, is the Republican/Blue Dogs approach to defeating reform. Conflating a couple of posts at Nate Silver's excellent Five Thirty-Eight blog we see a classic illustration of asymmetric warfare expressed in (so far) non-violent terms. Credits to Littlest Gator at GNB for putting me on this trail.

Simply stated, it is a three-point approach:

• ...it's easier to disqualify than qualify. A corollary to this is that the larger and/or more complex a policy is, the greater the disqualify-qualify asymmetry tends to be.


• ...the best approach is a shotgun one: raise every possible objection
  imaginable in order to maximize the number of people who can find at
  least one argument as the key, dispositive reason for their opposition.


• ...it makes sense to not only raise legitimate, provable objections but also false, misleading ones as well. Compounding this effect is the fact that when those trying to speak truthfully inevitably get frustrated by all the deception and misinformation, it creates the unfortunate impression  that the defenders are being defensive for other reasons...

This time-tested approach has proved successful more often than not. Indeed, colonial forces in civilian clothing, hiding in the woods prevailed over redcoats in uniform marching in formation by using the same asymmetric principles. Western movies have a name for it: ambush.

Tom Schaller paints a dreary picture.

In short, the same sort of "throw as much mud against the wall and see what sticks" philosophy used with great success over the years against, say, Democratic presidential nominees, is basically being applied to policy battles. Is it really all that puzzling that we are hearing claims like, Health care reform will kill your grandma! Bureaucrats will decide what tests you can take! There won't be enough doctors! Illegal immigrants will get covered for free! Are we really all surprised that this strategy is not only happening, but is working?

Oh, and just to be clear: the opposition's strategy is working. Here is a partial write-up by MSNBC's Mark Murray of new NBC News poll numbers released last night:

?Americans still skeptical about Obama�s plans
By Mark Murray, Deputy political director, NBC News
updated 6:30 p.m. ET, Tues., Aug 18, 2009

?WASHINGTON - Two weeks since raucous congressional town-hall meetings on health care became a national story � and days after President Barack Obama began holding his own town halls � Americans remain skeptical about White House plans to overhaul the nation�s health system, according to a new NBC News poll...

?Damaging misperceptions

One of the reasons why it has become tougher is due to misperceptions about the president�s plans for reform.

Majorities in the poll believe the plans would give health insurance coverage to illegal immigrants; would lead to a government takeover of the health system; and would use taxpayer dollars to pay for women to have abortions � all claims that nonpartisan fact-checkers say are untrue about the legislation that has emerged so far from Congress. (Emphasis added)

Forty-five percent think the reform proposals would allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care for the elderly.

That also is untrue: The provision in the House legislation that critics have seized on � raising the specter of �death panels� or euthanasia � would simply allow Medicare to pay doctors for end-of-life counseling, if the patient wishes.

That's asymmetrical warfare at work--and at its worst.

He points to a review by Scott McLemee of Lowenthal and Guterman�s classic Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator (1949).

The recent surge of right-wing fantasy into American public discourse should not be surprising. Claims that Obama is a foreigner, that health-care reform means bureaucratic death squads, that �the country we once knew is being destroyed,� as anguished people at town halls have put it � only on the most superficial level are these beliefs the product of ignorance, irrationality, and intractable boneheadedness.

Let�s face reality. An African-American man without so much as an Anglo-Saxon syllable to his name is now occupying an institution called (not on purely descriptive grounds) the White House. What did you think was going to happen? In the 1760s, George Washington complained that the British had a �systematic plan� to render the Americans �as tame and abject as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway.� (An interesting choice of terms, that.) This is a country in which anxiety goes deep, and all the way back. It is not an afterthought.

Go back and read those two paragraphs again. Slowly. Those last two sentences are worth repeating: This is a country in which anxiety goes deep, and all the way back. It is not an afterthought. There is a lot there in relatively few words.

Despite this bleak scenario, Nate Silver remains sanguine.

There's still a chance, though, for the Democrats to work their way out of this damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't scenario. There is at least a possibility for health care reform to gain popularity down the homestretch as the President grabs the bully pulpit and explains, in clear and simple terms to the American public, what the reform bill will and won't do.

Combatting this type of misinformation is not easy -- not when health care reform's opponents have every reason to perpetuate the confusion, not when the President's messaging has frequently missed a beat, and not when the Democrats have yet to agree on a particular proposal and are fighting over a variety of substantive and non-substantive details. But the President has to make every effort to do so. The fate of health care reform probably depends upon it.

I'm having a hard time remaining optimistic, but this helps. I would like the remainder of this month to be remembered as The Twelve Dog Days of August as President Obama, using whatever methods he and Rham Emmanuel can fashion, whip the Blue Dogs into submission and get on with the program.

Stuff like this is spreading worse than crabgrass. H/T Abbas

He hands the insurance industry a huge victory. He rewards the right-wing frothers who have been calling him Adolph Hitler or Dr. Death. He caves to the conservative bias of the major media who insist only bipartisan consensus is acceptable for big reform (a standard they never invoked during the Bush years). Obama is deluded if he thinks this will win him any peace or respect or Republican votes. Weakness does not lead to consensus in Washington. It leads to more weakness. The Party of No intends to bring him down and will pile on. Obama has inadvertently demonstrated their strategy of vicious invective seems to be working.

Barack Obama mainly did this to himself. To avoid the accusation of socialized medicine, he intentionally shrouded his objectives in bureaucratic euphemisms like "public option." What the hell does that mean? It doesn't mean anything. The vagueness allowed anyone to fill in the blanks and anxious people did so in apocalyptic ways. The original idea, after all, was making something similar to Medicare available to anyone between childhood and old age who was either shut out by high prices or abused by insurance companies policing the system. This approach--call it Medicare Basic--would in theory give government the greater leverage needed to control the price inflation and reshape the system in positive ways. If you told people "public option" was a Medicare equivalent, the polls would demonstrate the popularity. Instead, that objective is now at risk. The right still calls Obama a covert socialist.

It's time to break out the Round-Up. 

A more frightening reality is emerging than the reform conflict, that of the crystalizing of a toxic strain of populism not seen in America for decades. With the possible exception of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama may be the most erudite president of our lifetime. By nature he is born to be a political animal and charismatic leader. Thanks to an uncommon gift for conflict resolution he also can thread the tiniest of needles. And at some level he recognizes the importance of credibility. 

He seems to be seeking a challenge of Lincolnesque size and I think he regards the reform issue as just another political serving on his plate. Considering the scope of his responsibilities as President of the United States -- World Leader, health care reform falls in the "domestic issues" column, along with fiscal, monetary and foreign policy matters, a tick above the abortion issue but not as critical as global economic stability. After all, if the world economy goes to hell in a handbasket, all this arguing about inflation, health care or otherwise, amounts to so much confetti on the parade. 

Well, Mr. President, while your attention is rightly focused on those world-class topics, a problem of truly Linconesque proportions is growing under your feet. More threatening than any pandemic, more frightening than a terrorist attack, your election to the Oval Office has triggered the reemergence of some of America's worst qualities. And if you don't confront them soon those inclinations, now at a simmer, may come to a rolling boil.

PRA's The Public Eye published a report in June following the killing of Dr. George Tiller.

BOSTON � Charged with the fatal shooting of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in a church in Wichita, Kansas, last Sunday morning, Scott Philip Roeder is a regular consumer of conservative talk radio, television, and websites. But did Bill O�Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck�or any other commentator whipping up an audience with overheated demonizing rhetoric�actually help pull the trigger?

It�s not that simple, explains Chip Berlet, senior analyst for the independent think tank Political Research Associates (PRA), in a new study entitled Toxic to Democracy: Conspiracy Theories, Demonization, and Scapegoating. �They are not legally culpable for the assassination of Dr. Tiller, says Berlet, �but they must share some portion of moral responsibility for creating a dangerous environment.�

According to Berlet:

Right-wing pundits demonize scapegoated groups and individuals in our society, implying that it is urgent to stop them from wrecking the nation. Some angry people in the audience already believe conspiracy theories in which the same scapegoats are portrayed as subversive, destructive, or evil. Add in aggressive apocalyptic ideas that suggest time is running out and quick action mandatory and you have a perfect storm of mobilized resentment threatening to rain bigotry and violence across the United States.   [Emphasis added]

Demagogues and conspiracy theorists use the same four �tools of fear,� which Berlet identifies as 1) dualism; 2) scapegoating; 3) demonization; and 4) apocalyptic aggression. The basic dynamics remain the same no matter the ideological leanings of the demonizers or the identity of their targets. Meanwhile, our ability to resolve disputes through civic debate and compromise is hobbled. The study focuses on the history and dynamics of conspiracism, but argues that it is the combination of demagogic demonization and widespread conspiracy scapegoating that is so dangerous. In such circumstances, �angry allegations can quickly turn into aggression and violence targeting scapegoated groups,� writes Berlet.

Conspiracy theories are widespread among right-wing populists in the Patriot Movement, which spawned the armed citizens militias and the Freemen in the 1990s�networks from which Roeder seems to have emerged.

Tracing the roots of conspiracism throughout U.S. and European history, Toxic to Democracy challenges it as a form of political analysis. Modern conspiracism is rooted in bigotry, especially antisemitism and racism. Conspiracy theories encourage demonization and scapegoating of blameless persons and groups�distracting society and would-be agents of change away from the real causes of social and economic injustice. It�s practiced by demagogues on the Right and on the Left�and both inside and outside the corridors of power.

What Richard Hofstadter famously described as the �paranoid style� in American political rhetoric can quickly move far beyond the conscious intent of those who practice it. �People who believe conspiracist allegations sometimes act on those irrational beliefs, and this has concrete consequences in the real world.� writes Berlet. Thus the tools of fear pointed to Dr. Tiller, and what happened is now tragic history.

It is not a stretch to suggest that this expression of violence is neither unique nor co-incidental to what is a clear rightward shift in the American political center of gravity. Left unchecked, this will be a spark lighting another political wildfire. Thus far such fires have been extinguished or contained. But among the recent spate of public meetings widely enjoyed by television producers,  the Barney Franks and Arlen Specters are few and far between. We have seen instead open compliance with the lies and misinformation memes that now pollute nearly every event.

When a man appeared in the New Hampshire crowd with a loaded pistol at his side, holding a sign referring to a well-known Jeffersonian quote that it's  "time to water the tree of Liberty" little was made of the full quote: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Since then a spate of copy-cats has followed his sick example. I cannot imagine that loaded firearms in a well-behaved crowd is a good sign.

When the enlightened Senator who originally made it a point to underscore the importance of advance directives is frightened into retreating from that position, and when terms like "death panels" find their way into the vocabulary of any discussion, reasonable voices are no longer being heard.

Someone close to the president needs to help him see the importance of this simmering problem in the electorate. He swept into office with a mandate not seen in many years and the future of America is exactly what his vision of hope projects. But we are not there yet and unwarranted fears must be put to rest. Left unattended this challenge will not trigger another Civil War, but what Mr. Obama confronts will be a lot worst than he expects. When reform passes (I'm still hopeful) the evil forces that it overcame will survive and grow stronger. Even if the beneficiaries of reform rejoice in one voice, the same poisonous elements of the electorate now showing their worst qualities will remain. And their fears, anger and ignorance will only be more solid, waitiing for the next confrontation.